The 'Rook' who flew across borders building the Iskra network, and the revolution's first martyr
He was handsome, a fine fellow with a guitar — even in exile he played, composed epigrams on the spot, drew caricatures. So the historian Vladlen Loginov recalled Bauman.
A Volga German veterinary surgeon turned Bolshevik, he ran Lenin's Iskra illegal distribution network inside Russia. Killed by a monarchist during the October 1905 demonstrations, his funeral drew 100,000 mourners and turned into a show of revolutionary force.
Career timeline
1895Graduates Kazan Veterinary Institute; works in Saratov province
1896–1897Member, St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class
1897–1899Arrested; 22 months solitary in Peter and Paul Fortress; exiled to Vyatka
1900Works with Lenin in Switzerland to launch Iskra; heads illegal transport into Russia
1901–1903Moscow Committee; arrested in Kiev, escapes ('Escape of the Eleven'); delegate to 2nd RSDLP Congress — Bolshevik
1903–1904Leads Moscow Bolshevik organization & Northern Bureau of CC; arrested, 16 months in Taganka Prison
1905.10Released from prison; killed days later by a monarchist during a street demonstration
Soviet Union
Soviet communism
1874–1940
→ Died in prison
The Menshevik statistician who designed Gosplan's early control figures and balance method, leading voice of genetic planning
December 27, 1929, at the All-Union Conference of Marxist Agrarians. Stalin, from the rostrum, aimed directly at Groman's theory that 'the October Revolution gave the peasantry less than the February Revolution.' When a voice from the audience asked 'Who was it?' Stalin answered: 'It was Groman.' In that moment, genetic planning received its political death sentence.
Statistician and economist, born in Moscow to a German father and Russian mother. Joined the RSDLP in 1898 as a Menshevik, co-authoring the agrarian program; as head of the Penza statistical bureau he developed a multi-phase sampling method. After the February Revolution he chaired the Petrograd food-supply commission, and in 1921 joined Gosplan where he headed the Conjunctural Institute, designing the first Control Figures and the balance method. With Bazarov he championed the genetic planning approach; after Stalin's public condemnation he was arrested in 1930 and as lead defendant in the 1931 Menshevik Trial received ten years, dying in the Suzdal camp.
Career timeline
1894–1908Entered Moscow University; expelled for revolutionary activity; graduated externally 1908
1898–1905Joined RSDLP; stayed Menshevik after 2nd Congress; co-authored agrarian program; began statistical work in exile in Vyatka and Yenisei
1909–1914Headed Penza provincial statistical bureau; developed multi-phase sampling method for peasant household surveys
1917–1918After February Revolution: chairman of Petrograd Soviet food commission and Central Food Administration; after October: Northern Regional Food Administration head
1921–1926Headed Gosplan's Conjunctural Institute; designed first Control Figures and the balance method; formulated 'restorative growth' concept
1926–1929Chaired Gosplan agricultural section; with Bazarov championed genetic planning; publicly condemned by Stalin at All-Union Conference of Marxist Agrarians
1930–1940Arrested in 'Union Bureau of Mensheviks' case; 1931 trial: 10 years; died in Suzdal ITL 1940; rehabilitated 1991
First woman to lead a Soviet government, between revolution and terminal illness
As German troops advanced on Kyiv, Bosch refused to abandon the city without a fight. Her comrades had to forcibly evacuate her.
A Bolshevik of German settler background, she became the first woman to head a Soviet government as acting leader of Ukraine's People's Secretariat in 1917. In Swiss exile she opposed Lenin on the national question; later she signed the Left Opposition's Declaration of 46. She died in 1925 after years of incurable illness.
Career timeline
1901Joined RSDLP; active in Bolshevik faction after the 1903 split
1907–1911Underground revolutionary work in Kyiv; secretary of the Kyiv Committee
1912–1914Arrested, exiled to Siberia, escaped via Japan and the US to Switzerland
1914–1917Swiss exile; opposed Lenin on the national question in the 'Baugy group'
1917.04–07Chair of South-Western Regional Party Committee; VI Party Congress delegate
1917.12–1918.03Acting head, People's Secretariat of Ukraine; People's Secretary of Internal Affairs
1918–1919Chair of Penza Party Committee; political commissar on Caspian-Caucasus Front
1923–1924Joined the Left Opposition; signed the Declaration of 46
Presiding judge of the Moscow show trials, Stalin's 'judicial guillotine'
To an Estonian lawyer he had just condemned to death, Ulrikh smiled and said: "So your profession came in handy after all!"
Chairman of the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court (1926–1948) and the judicial face of the Stalin-era Great Purge. Born in Riga to a Baltic German revolutionary father and a Russian noble mother, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1910 and began his Cheka career in 1918. He presided over the Moscow show trials of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and Tukhachevsky (1936–1938), directing a body that handed down over 30,000 death sentences in two years. After the war he presided over the trials of Nazi collaborators Vlasov and Krasnov, and the leaders of the Polish Underground State. Reporting directly to Stalin outside the ordinary judicial hierarchy, he embodied a parallel justice system designed for political repression. Removed in 1948, he died of a stroke in 1951.
Career timeline
1910Joined RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
1914Graduated from Riga Polytechnical Institute, commercial dept.
1915–1917Podporuchik, Imperial Russian Army sapper battalion
1918–1919Head of Finance, NKVD and Cheka
1920Judge, Revolutionary Military Tribunal of the Republic
1921–1926Chairman, Military Collegium of RSFSR Supreme Court
1926–1948Chairman, Military Collegium of USSR Supreme Court
1935–1948Deputy Chairman, USSR Supreme Court
1948–1951Director, Higher Military-Juridical Courses, Military Law Academy
